A City of Good...Communism?

The Republic Book II may be my favorite reading so far this semester.

In the Republic Book II - Socrates suggests a city created entirely of the bare necessities (food, clothes, health, shelter, etc..) and populate it with workers. Those workers will be important for the growing of the city, and the production of such necessities. Socrates then suggests that you would introduce the city to a "fever", poets, merchants, actors - who will have an surplus of income, leading to civil unrest, inequality, and essentially war. This is where I think of other ideology from political philosophers, such as Karl Marx. I know it may sound funny but hear me out...

Socrates is suggesting that a city with the bare necessities would be a good, just city...but once you introduce the fluctuation of income it will lead to inequality. Now, Marx suggests that by leveling all playing fields (income) and each person having the same benefits, society will be equal.

It seems as though Socrates was a leading front for Marx's argument on communism. From Socrates idea of a city of good, you can see that those workers who were first there would be the proletariats of the capitalist society, and the "feverish" people (actors, poets, merchants) would essentially be the bourgeois of the capitalist society.

When it all comes down to it, it seems that injustice/inequality/unrest is seen as more of an issue of class distinction.

Producing with Means

After reading "Existentialism is a Humanism," something that I noticed was the argument that production isn't simply done for fun, but it has a purpose, every product that we produce has an end purpose. For some reason this idea has stayed in my mind for last couple of days and I have been trying to argue in a sense.

I was determined to find one thing that was produced without an actual purpose, and obviously not matter what I came up with, I found some purpose (whether great or small) that it could be used for. So here lies my question, have we abused the power of production?

As a society, and as a world, we seem to produce and produce and produce, and while of course we've now grown reasons to produce products, but it seems as though we are starting to produce these products with the hope of eventually having a reason for them. I know this seems like a turn around argument, but the point of it is, I don't think that we always have a purpose for a product that we produce, we rather produce it, in hopes of gaining a purpose for it.

Leap of Faith - Into Love

Dr. Layne brought up the question of why we love who we love, saying that sometimes when she is asked that she is embarrassed because she cannot answer. That got me thinking - love isn't something that you can easily define. Call me a hopeless romantic, but when you saying you love someone, is different then showing you love someone. When you're in love, or you do love someone, it's something that you don't even understand yourself.

Essentially when you do love someone, you are taking a leap of faith. Love isn't something with guidelines or a strict set of rules, it's something that you feel, and something your actions display. By taking that "leap" into love, you are not only committing your feelings, but yourself. Some people may leap into love blindly, not understanding why they are moving towards this so called mythical feeling that is rarely understood.

This being said, we compared love to belief in God. Every person has their own set of beliefs. No person has the same belief of who God is, if God truly does exists, and the power of God. Seeing the correlation between the idea of God and the idea of love, it's easily understood that love is something that is personal, and something that differs from person to person.

Class Synopsis March 25, 2011

On Friday we began class with a quiz based off of Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto”. The quiz covered questions ranging from “Workers of the World Unite,” to the ten short-term demands to the spectre of communism that was haunting Europe. We discussed Marx’s comment that the bourgeois only allow men to relate through “naked self-interest, payment in cash.” By this, Marx was saying that no longer are things necessarily done for the betterment of society, but rather solely for self and for monetary value. In return, the bourgeois is strictly using the proletariats to develop a product. We then discussed how the two classes; the bourgeois and the proletariats differ. The bourgeois are of an “upper class” with typical focus on materialistic values, while the proletariats are generally the laborers, producing most materials. Because the bourgeois focuses so heavily on the production of materials, it leaves no relationship to the producers of those materials, the capitalist society only produces so that it can gain monetary value.
After the quiz we watch a video with a voice over from Marx’s “Communist Manifesto,” with popular cartoons depicting what exactly his manifesto represented. In the movie, while Marx discusses the need of a constantly expanding network of expanding products, showing the stretch of the bourgeois across the entire globe, and showing how rather then using indigenous materials, the bourgeois is now using raw material from the “remotest zones,” such as oil. Marx then goes on to say that the ideology of the bourgeois is spreading, leading other countries to become bourgeois themselves – showing the distribution of wealth into only a few people’s hands. The video then discusses the growth of production and agriculture, which he explains as the “epidemic of over production.” He explains these “crises” as being handled by war, or colonization of new land for more producing. He then discusses the placement of proletariats, saying that they are soon to be replaced by the over production of machinery, because of this growth in machinery, wages are being reduced. Due to the lack in work for the proletariats, the class unites and forms a union. The spread of this sense of “revolution” through the proletariat class is developed through modern day communication. Marx then explains the ridding property of personal ownership, which is “alleged to be the ground work of all personal freedom, activity and independence.” He then continues to explain that if you are to remove the “petty property” of the peasant and artisans, there is no need because the spread of industrialization and lack of work left for people has already taken that property away. Marx explains that in capitalist society, most people (9/10) do not actually have any property, rather are renting or borrowing because the 10% of property owners hold all of the wealth in the population. He then goes on to explain how communism doesn’t guarantee everyone wealth, but rather restrict the action of exploiting the work of others. Finally, communism will differ from the class structure of the bourgeois and proletariat because there will be no class difference. Marx claims that with class difference comes oppression, claiming that the “free development of each, is the free development of all,” leaving the proletariats to only gain from this communist revolution.
In the final video, we watched Glenn Beck interview Sam Webb, the USA Chairman of the Communist Party. While we did not get to watch the entire movie, enough was seen to note that Glenn Beck rather did not let Sam Webb speak about anything, and instead immediately shut down his commentary.

Understanding Opinions

In class we discussed the idea of "the person who has spoken and heard all opinions has more right to hold their opinion."

My dad and I often discuss politics, and recently we discussed the West Borough Baptist Church being sued. WBC is the group that protests soliders funerals, along with LGBT events - insisting that God is damning the United States and the world to hell because of its tolerance of homosexuality. My claim to this argument was always, "who cares what they think, they are stupid." Now, in class Dr. Layne brought up the idea that you cannot argue someone by condemning them, but rather in order to truly argue you must understand them. This idea was interesting to me, while I still despise WBC, I have realized that so many people are infuriated over what they do, simply because the WBC themselves do not show much of an understanding.

Over all, I realized that in order to argue any argument, you cannot merely blow off the opposing party because you believe that your views are right, but you rather must understand where they are coming from to properly argue against them.

Justice and Injustice

In the Republic Book II, Glaucon argues that if being unjust had no consequences people would carry through with it. But, because we have established laws and contracts with how to be just, people stay between those lines because it is the right thing to do. The idea is that people only stay just for the mere reason that they do not want to suffer injustice.

I would argue this for many reasons, but the most important being - people inherently are good. Maybe that is naive of me to say, but I truly do believe it. In preparing for our second paper, I went on a bit of a hunt for arguments against Glaucon. The one that made the most sense was from one of our first readings, Plato's Crito. In the Crito, Socrates explains the story of growing up in Athens. He says that when you have reached a certain age, you can make the decision to stay or to leave the city, and if you chose to stay then you followed the citys rules and laws. It is shown here that by choosing to live in Athens, you would be just, furthering the idea that justice is a desirable trait.

Lastly, I believe that people don't simply act just out of fear of injustice being committed against them, but because people are generally trying to better the environment that they live in.

Cause and Effect

An inductive argument draws from a general conclusion, and essentially poses a cause and effect like response. For instance, if you only have seen white swans, you would assume all swans are white. If you walk into a room and hit the light switch and the light comes on, then obviously the two are connected. Much like Hume, I would argue that cause and effect isn't necessarily the answer - but rather based off of habit.

For instance, when Pavlov did the bell experiment with the dogs (when you rang the bell, the dogs would come because they knew that there would be food) it was simply the idea of training the mind to think that when you hear a bell, food must be near. If you rang a bell at a passing dog, it may not do anything besides just stare at you blankly. But, for instance, if you trained a dog to run when a bell rang, the dog would run.

Essentially, Pavlov's experiment, and Hume's argument both supply amble amount of reason to believe that cause and effect aren't solely inherent, but rather based off of experience, and a sense of "training" your brain to understand something.

Is Knowledge Really a Recollection?

In the Phaedo, a point was brought up about learning - how it is merely a recollection of thoughts that we already know. In a sense, it's inherent intelligence that we are born with. But I don't see how that is actually the case. Knowledge, much like everything else is ever changing - obviously we have knowledge of things such as murder, etc... - but on the other side, knowledge changes with the environment that it is in.

For instance, if knowledge is recollecting past thoughts or inherited thoughts, then we would be essentially going in endless circles and never resolving from anything. This thought is simple - lets say that we are learning about science. The atom is the basic form of life, a stable factor. But the variable is the environment, and with the every changing environment, how can we be sure the actual form of life that the atom will take on? Obviously this is very complex, and I am getting confused by writing it - but to me there's two main points of this. 1) If knowledge is simply a recollection of thoughts, something that lives on originally, how are we advancing at such a quick rate and why is the idea of "knowledge" changing every day - with thoughts, beliefs, and ideology changing with it. 2) If knowledge is inherited,why do we face reoccurring problems through the world?

Granted this may not have been the intended argument of the Phaedo, but it begs the question of if knowledge is reoccurring, then why do we continue to face the same challenges?

Arguments...

I never knew the do's and don'ts of an argument. I figured if you could argue your point, and support it with an emotional backing of self opinion, you were perfectly alright. And if you wanted to include some evidence, then it would be even better. But that is not the case.

In class we have been talking about what arguments are, and how to form them properly. Which not only got me thinking, but got me paying very close attention to anyone who tried to prove a point.

When it comes to how to argue, I've realized that you must have evidence backing your conclusion, which is essentially your grounds of the argument. You must be able to support what exactly you are saying, and what exactly it deals with in the context of the argument. For instance, using the idea of a priori and a posteriori, when arguing a point of view, it is much easier done with an a posteriori argument. To understand an argument better, I truly believe that you must have experience in what you are arguing for. If we listen to our grand parents tales of how great or awful the 1950's were, we would have some idea, but no real understanding or support of saying, "Oh, the 1950's were great!" without having some experience of the 1950's first hand.

Maybe it's personal that I am more prone to listen to an argument when someone can back it with support, or maybe it's just because when people have evidence the argument seems to be clear.

Ethics, Equality, and Authority

When discussing ethics, the question of whether we should treat all people equally or should we behave differently with people close to us? For some unexplained reason this question lingered in my mind for days as I attempted to understand everything that it was saying.

Treating people equally ranges from the Civil Rights, the Feminist movement, the treatment of friends, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and the list can go on and on. All of these things are pushing for equal treatment. In the scope of friendship and family, equal treatment seems to sway back and forth based with each person.

Friendships are based off of treatment in some cases. Usually friendships are based on equality; no one holds the upper hand or more power, and when that does occur friendships may turn a little bit rocky as they try to fix the problem at hand and return to a normal friendship. One without constraints.

Now when talking about family, the line of equality may become strained. Many times family relationships are often strong friendships as well. When dealing with cousins and siblings close to the same age the equality is generally not an issue. Moving from that relative age, to dealing with aunts, uncles, your parents, and grandparents, authority becomes a key player. And with authority, equality is not always present.

To answer the question posed from ethics; I agree that all people should be treated and treat each other with equality, but when authority plays a role in the relationship I think that equality is hard to attain, at least completely